Lords of Darkness
by Snorkling
Summary: Magic has seeped into the Shinobi world, and fate has a very peculiar way of solving this problem: Toss in some unknowing wizards and hope for the best! *Contains an actual plot*
1. Chapter 1: Dreams of Commotion

**Kapitel 1**

**Dreams of Commotion  
**

"This is wrong, you guys!" whispered Callie urgently. "We are going to get into so much trouble! Detention will be the least of it!"

But the short, blonde girl's sensible input was thoroughly ignored. Her two companions were too wrapped up in their low-pitched discussion to even hear what she was saying – all the while the gargoyle in front of them stood as stone still as could be expected, though definitely not as was preferred.

"_Firebolt Ultima _– _Wronski feint _– come on, James, we'll never guess it! Can't we just _bombardio_ the thing away?"

"_Holyhead Harpies _– are you mental? The blast would wake the entire castle! Besides, don't you think Professor Johnson's got her office better guarded than that, huh? _Chudley Cannons_. Did you know, that's my uncle Ron's favourite team."

"Really? But they lose everything…"

"Tell me about it."

Callie abandoned her post behind the empty armour at the far end of the corridor and scurried back towards her reckless friends as quickly and quietly as possible. "Can we please focus on the part about getting into more trouble than galleons can buy? Come on," she implored the black-haired and bespectacled boy, because he was the most likely to listen, "she said it herself – we'll never guess it!"

"Not with that attitude, we won't," Mathilda stated, tossing a lock of her brown and curly hair off her shoulder. She turned towards the stone gargoyle and tapped on it with her knuckles. "We gotta keep going! _Puddlemere United, Falmouth Falcons _– come on, help me out!"

Beside her, James shrugged. "I guess we might as well go through all the British and Irish teams, just in case…"

Callie opened her mouth to protest, but just then, the gargoyle let out a heartfelt moan. All three children jumped.

"Did we get it?" Mathilda gasped.

The stone monster groaned again and split its mouth open with a crunching sound. "You most certainly did not!" it rumbled dramatically. "But the prospect of listening to you trying to guess the password all night…"

"Then just tell us!" Mathilda injected smartly. "Tell us, and we'll be out of your hair – uh, gravel – whatever – in no time at all!"  
"As if no one's ever tried _that_ one before," said the gargoyle snidely.

"Oh, that's it! _Bombar–_"

"_No!_" James and Callie yelled in unison. They simultaneously threw themselves at Mathilda, and half a second later, they were all lying tangled up on the floor, while Mathilda's unfinished spell bounced from her wand and down the corridor, ricocheting off of the stone walls until, finally, it struck the armour that Callie had been keeping lookout behind moments before. With a crash fit to wake the dead, the iron pieces tumbled to the ground.

A beat of silence followed.

Then Callie whimpered. "Oh gosh. Oh boy."

"Oh no!"

Footsteps could be heard now, drawing rapidly nearer. A loud, clear voice called from around the corner, "Who's there?"

James shot to his feet, urged on by Mathilda's frantic whispers of, "Get the cloak! Get the cloak!" In one quick motion, he grabbed a large silvery cloth from where he had abandoned it on the floor ten minutes ago and tossed it over himself and the two girls, just as a person rounded the corner. Now invisible to the naked eye, James, Mathilda, and Callie very carefully stepped away from the stone gargoyle. James noted with some annoyance that it looked rather amused for a supposedly unmovable piece of stone.

But his attention was immediately diverted back to his friends' and his main concern; the professor who had just stepped into view. If the cloak had been soundproof, too, James would have moaned out loud. Possibly the strictest teacher of the entire faculty, the tall, ethnic looking Professor Tameri, was standing stock still right in front of the invisble threesome, staring straight through them at the pile of metal in the other end of the corridor. The light from the torches on the wall made her eyes glitter eerily. James felt Callie's hand clenching around the fabric of his shirt, but her hold shifted instantly to a death grip around his arm when Professor Tameri carefully drew her wand.

With a flick of her wrist, Tameri rapped the gargoyle right between its eyes. The thing came to life with a headshake.

"That hurts my feelings, you know," it mumbled.

Professor Tameri appeared unmoved. "Have any students passed by here?"

"Hundreds of students pass by here every day."

"Yes, but within the last few minutes?"

"Oh. Well, yes."

James's heart leapt to his throat where it thudded like mad.

"Who?"

The gargoyle shrugged as good as any gargoyle can. "Can't tell. You all look alike to me."

A frown creased the smooth forehead of the copper skinned witch. "Tell me, gargoyle. Did they try to pass you?"

"Why yes, they did! And not very well, either. One of them even tried to blow me up." The thing sighed and scratched some shrapnel off its chest with a set of giant claws. "Rather foolish behaviour, I think you will agree."

Mathilda crossed her arms and let out the smallest huff of air.

Half a second later, Tameri had spun on her high heel, facing the three, though not aware of it – yet, James added darkly. The silence was ringing in James' ears, as Tameri's eyes searched the corridor intently. He hardly dared to breathe.

Tameri raised her wand slowly. "_Homenum reve_–"

But the tension – and whatever spell Tameri was uttering – broke when, from seemingly nowhere (though James guessed that the hidden passage behind a tapestry in the adjacent corridor might have something to do with it), a small, if not tiny man came hustling forth, waving his _lumos_-lit wand back and forth with vigour.

"_Students_!" he yelled with a squeaky voice, "I know you're–!"

Then his eyes caught sight of Tameri. "Oh! Professor! I didn't… did you make that noise?"

"Of course not," Tameri deadpanned, lowering her wand and easing her stand, to the intense relief of the trio beneath the Invisibility Cloak. "I came here to find the culprits, same as you."

"Oh! Well, then. Have you found them?"

Tameri allowed a moment of silence to pass, a moment which the newly arrived man – the janitor, Lester Lesskettle – spent on noticing that the corridor appeared to be completely deserted sans the professor and himself.

"No," Tameri then emphasized.

James felt Mathilda shudder with a barely concealed giggle, and jabbed at her with his elbow, not surprised, but certainly miffed that she had come so close to revealing them. On the other side of James, Callie's grip was cutting off the blood-circulation in his arm.

"R-right," stuttered Lesskettle and drew his hand nervously through his hair, something he did so often that muggleborns were prone to assume he was fond of flying kites in thunder storms. Then, in a wildly transparent attempt at creating conversation, he shakily asked, "So, what, uh… I wonder what they were doing here, anyway?"

"Trying to get to the Headmistress's office, for whatever reason. They failed, however, unsurprisingly."

Lesskettle laughed weakly. "Unsurprisingly, yes, indeed. Who would ever guess that the password is _snitches and quaffles_? It's too easy! I – _whoops_!"

The gargoyle had just sprung to life again and moved to bare the entranceway for the office.

Professor Tameri fisted her hands tightly, and by the look of her face, she seemed to be gritting her teeth, too, all the while Lesskettle was tattling away about "accidents" and "all's good when no harm's done, eh", and other such things.

Finally, Tameri cut through sternly: "_In any case_, hopefully they haven't gone far. I came from the same way as you, so that leaves only two corridors they could have taken. You take one, I'll take the other." And she was off, the heels of her boots rapping against the floor. Lesskettle hurried after.

"Yes, brilliant idea, professor! I –"

A loud _meow_ cut him short, and the tiny man gasped.

"Madame Norris! Where are you when I need you? There are students on the loose – oh, don't give me that look – no, no, there's no one down there, kitty, that's where I just came from! Now, this way –"

In a matter of minutes, silence had fallen once again in the corridor.

Before the clacking noises of boot heels and the hissing of the disgruntled Madame Norris had even faded entirely, Mathilda was out from under the cloak, her face alight with glee. "_Snitches and quaffles_! Ha!" she exclaimed. "It's true, we _never_ would have guessed something so simple!"

"Keep your voice down!" hissed Callie, also appearing from beneath the cloak as if from thin air. Her voice was shriller than usually. "Do you have _any_ idea what would have happened if they'd found us?!"

"Attempt at breaking and entering the Headmistress's office… I'd say 100 points each and four full weeks of detention," James mused out loud. "At the very least."

"But they didn't!" said Mathilda. "And now we have the password!"

Callie sputtered wildly. "You can't honestly want to go through with this! After what just happened?"

"_It was sign_!"

"Honestly, Callie, you're not going to quit on us now, are you?" James raised his eyebrows with a grin, unknowingly making said girl's heart beat faster. "_You're _the one who woke up an hour ago and told us, or Mathilda anyway, that it was crucial we got a hold of the Sorting Hat. Well, the Sorting Hat is in the Headmistress's office, isn't it?"

"I… I…" Callie grappled after something to say, searching her brain for some evasive tactic. "I say a lot of stuff when I wake up from deep sleep."

"Yeah," Mathilda added with a smirk, "and most of it's true, too."

Callie didn't answer for a while. She was unsure of what to say. How do you explain waking up in the middle of the night, having already forgotten your vivid dream, but knowing – beyond a shred of doubt – exactly what needs to be done, even if you don't know why? James had once told Callie about his infamous father's meeting with a curious potion called _Felix Felicis_. Callie had recognised the feelings he described – the assuredness, the bone-deep _knowledge_ about which way to go – as the same she had after one of _those_ dreams, dreams she hardly ever remembered. But much like regular dreams, the longer she stayed awake, the more the certainty faded away. And what was left in its wake was nothing but confusion and doubt.

And in this case, a butt-load of trouble.

Right now, Callie felt the best thing to do was back out before she effectively blew Gryffindor's chances of winning the House Cup this year. Rawenclaw had been on the receiving end of that prize for two years in a row now, and they were becoming increasingly and exponentially cocky about it. If she, Mathilda, and James got into trouble this early in the year, there would be no catching up to the other Houses, and Gryffindor would probably trot in as dead-last in the House Cup race, come summer.

But there was something gnawing at the back of her mind. Callie couldn't deny it. She didn't know what possessed her to want to go into the Headmistress's office and _steal_ the Sorting Hat – heck, the more she thought about it, the more she thought they could all get expelled for it – but then again, she put her faith in magic all the time, and she didn't know how that worked, either. The fact of the matter was that, rationality be damned, she just couldn't turn her back on this. It felt wrong.

So finally, she nodded sombrely. "Alright, guys," she said, steeling herself as much as possible. "Let's do this."

Both Mathilda and James looked astounded, but Mathilda recovered first. "That's the spirit! Now – _snitches and quaffles_!"

The gargoyle leapt aside.

* * *

**A/N:** Re-upload to fix some minor mistakes. This maaaay happen again, as this is a work in progress. Sorry for the confusion!


	2. Chapter 2: In the Headmistress' Office

**Chapter 2**

**In the Headmistress' Office**

The door on top of the spiralling staircase was unlocked. The Headmistress must be depending entirely on the password-demanding stone gargoyle to guard her office. James, Mathilda, and Callie slipped in without trouble, and once they stood on the hardboard floor, were very, very still.

All around them, in gilded and intricately carved frames, slumbered every witch or wizard that had ever rightly been able to call him- or herself Headmaster of Hogwarts. The office was neat and clean, it's furniture dark and brazen, but beautifully handcrafted. Several shelves lined with strange potions hung on the wall above a hearth, in which some remains of firewood still smouldered.

Mathilda shot an appraising glance at the portraits on the wall. "Reckon they'll tell on us if they find out we're here?"

"Definitely," James whispered back.

"So they shouldn't find out," Mathilda concluded.

"Let's just get the hat and get out of here," Callie breathed.

She stepped over to a large wardrobe and opened it as quietly as possibly, hearing the soft scuffling noises of her friends looking for the hat elsewhere in the office behind her back. Unfortunately for Callie, though there were several hats on display on a shelf inside the wardrobe, none of them were as moth-eaten or tattered as she remembered the Sorting Hat to be.

"Callie," she heard Mathilda whisper somewhere to her left, "you know we can't bring the Hat with us, right?"

"What do you mean?" Callie tiptoed to check the back of the wardrobe, pondering whether or not to risk using _lumos_ to get a better view of the insides. The only light came from the brilliant, full moon outside the window, and its silvery glow was of very limited help to Callie.

"We can't leave with the hat," Mathilda explained, busy looking through the shelves. "If we steal it, they'll know we've been here, and they'll definitely find us. So you gotta do whatever you gotta do here – that way, no one will ever suspect a thing!"

"Mathilda, are you feeling well? You're making sense for a change," James chuckled from behind the Headmistress' desk.

"Well, I have more at stake than the rest of you nitwits. If I get kicked out, I go back to living in Muggleville, you know."

"Don't be stupid, you'd come and live with my family. Lily would topple over from exaltation. Hey, here it is!"

In his fisted hand, the sad shape of the Sorting Hat was hanging limply, looking for all intent and purpose like a creature – or in this case, thing – who had given up all will to live. Of course, every student at Hogwarts knew better. The artificial mind of Godric Gryffindor's old hat was as sharp today as it had been centuries ago when it was made. The three delinquents in the Headmistress's office gathered around the desk and watched the item with awe.

"Alright," James said, holding it towards Callie. "Do your thing."

Callie gulped. Mathilda and James were looking at her expectantly, but she had no idea what to say or do. Her thing? What thing? The "wake-in-the-middle-of-the-night-with-a-brilliant-and-illegal-idea-drag-your-friends-into-it-and-then-forget-why" thing? Oh sweet Merlin, they were all doomed.

Throat as parched as a desert, the only thing Callie could come up with was accepting the rag from James and pressing it firmly down on top of her platinum hair.

A scant few seconds passed before the consciousness of the Hat made itself known.

"_Ahh_," a small voice sighed inside Callie's head. "_Good evening, my dear. It has been a long time, hasn't it? Perhaps you have come to let me know you have changed your mind?_"

_I'm sorry,_ Callie thought timidly, _I haven't._

"_Hmm, no, I see as much. Oh._" A short pause followed. _"Child, you don't even know why you are here_?"

_I – I did_. Callie was embarrassed to stutter even in her thoughts. _Now I… I can't remember._

"_I understand. Your gift is a complicated one._"

Callie sighed mentally. _You have no idea._

Meanwhile, as almost a minute had passed without any explosions, near-expulsions or life-changing revelations, Mathilda's patience had run thin. Huffing, she turned from Callie to James. "Come on, let's look around. I'll bet you a galleon this is the first and last time we'll _ever_ be in the Headmistress's office unsupervised!"

"_One_?I'll bet you ten!" James grinned mischievously. "And another five if you find the alleged stash of phoenix feathers!"

"I'm not interested in robbing your family, Potter. What I want to know is what potions a Headmistress of Hogwarts keeps in handy!"

With that, they scuffled in each their direction, James searching the walls for hidden drawers and doorknobs, while Mathilda stood on her toes to read the inscriptions on the potions lining the shelf above the hearth, leaving Callie to her silent – and as of yet still unfruitful – conversation with the rag resting on top of her head.

All but five seconds passed like this.

Then the door swung wide open, and somebody called out, "_Compello corpus_!"

Instantly, all three trespassers felt a sharp tug in their midsections, and a forceful power pulled them all to the centre of the room, knocking them off of their feet as they went.

James recovered first and was up in a second, his mind racing to come up with a way out of this mess. But facing him with her wand raised was a livid Professor Tameri, and the only sentence James' befuddled mind could conjure up, was "Oh, bloody hell."

"I admit," Tameri began in a deadly voice, "my first priority was to be rid of Lesskettle. It took me fairly long to remember that if _somebody_ had been hiding in the vicinity while Lesskettle blabbered, the Headmistress' office would be entirely exposed to them. I backtracked immediately, of course. And look what I found."

Her honey-coloured eyes swept over the three of them as they stood trembling on the middle of the floor.

"The will be severe consequences, of course," the professor said matter-of-factly. "I suspect expulsion is the most reasonable –"

"Professor!" Callie exclaimed, stepping forward, "It was all my fault – I wanted to go here, the others had nothing to do with it –"

"Oh, shut your trap," Mathilda said gently, pulling Callie back by her wrist. "We're in this as much as you!"

Tameri looked entirely unimpressed by this display of loyalty. "That you are, regardless of whose foolish idea it was. Though I must admit, Ms. Vablatsky, your involvement in this surprises me. I have been under the impression you were the tag-along in this little group."

Callie looked at her shoes at the same time as James stepped forward. "Hey, you can't –"

"_Careful_, Mr. Potter –"

"I'VE GOT THEM! I'VE GOT THEM!"

Absolutely everybody was stunned to silence when the office door sprung open once again, and two students stumbled through, followed by a triumphant, slightly winded Lesskettle. He beamed as soon as he came in clear view of Tameri. "Professor! 'Ere's the wrongdoers! Found 'em two corridors past! Tried ter talk their way out, they did, yapping on about forgetting the time, but it takes more smarts than what you can spit at to fool me!"

And he made an impressing gesture with his arm, as to indicate his own grandeur, and in the process, scoped a bottle down from a shelf so that it shattered on a floor, spreading its content of white sand all over the place.

An uneasy feeling suddenly crept up Callie's spine.

Lesskettle, oblivious, only now seemed to notice his accident. "Oops! I shall have to clean that up, shouldn't be a problem, should it? At least I found the culprits…"

The poor man paused, having suddenly noticed that three culprits were already present. Perhaps he also realised that Professor Tameri was giving him her most deadly look, which was just short of a full-fledged Basilisk glare. At least, he looked appropriately stunned.

"You –"

It was clear to all that the foreign Professor Tameri was losing her temper. Callie was certain she heard the air crack around the professor when she turned on Lesskettle and took a step forwards. The other rule breakers, a girl and a boy – both of which Callie recognised as sixth year Slytherins, to her intense discomfort – chose to step aside and thus leave nothing between the angry Professor and her target, the trembling janitor, who made the wrong move and backed himself up against the shelf he had just cleared.

"Now, Professor – no need to be hasty – I can scope that sand up real quick – I was of _some_ use, at least –"

He indicated wildly towards the Slytherins, but Tameri didn't move her eyes from him.

"You fool – you _incompetent_ –"

"W-what!" yelled Lesskettle out loud in an obviously desperate move, looking at the watch on his wrist only after his exclamation. "Is this really the time? I must be going!"

And he turned and bolted out the door.

Behind Professor Tameri's back, the five students were suddenly closer than they had initially noticed. It they were also just now recognising just who they where in the company of.

"Pyrrus," hissed James with obvious distaste.

The sentiment was returned in full by the male Slytherin, a tall, broad-shouldered boy with dark eyes and short-cropped hair the colour of dark copper. "If it isn't the Potter boy," he sneered. "And the groupies, of course."

He swept a look over Mathilda and Callie while his female counterpart snickered.

"Oh, like _you_'_re_ doing any better?" challenged Mathilda with a nod in the girl's direction, effectively cutting off her amusement.

Callie pulled at step back, uncomfortable in the tense atmosphere. She looked to the floor and noticed that the white sand spilled by Lesskettle had moved by its own accord, and was now covering the floor where they stood.

"Settle down," Tameri called sharply. "I am summoning the Headmistress right this instant, and rest assured you can look forward to losing fifty points _each_, as _bare minimum_ –"

But Callie barely heard a word she was saying. Something seemed off – a hum in the air, as though a sound you can't be sure is real –

"– and I _strongly_ advice you keep your mouth shut from here on in and don't give cause for any other –"

"Professor!" Callie finally called out in alarm, realising something was wrong, realising it was already too late –

Beneath their feet, the white sand flashed a blue colour.

Callie felt a harsh tug behind her belly, and her feet were ripped off the ground. Spinning and twisting, she was nauseated, blind, unable to breathe – the world was ripping itself apart around her, surely – such conditions were not meant to be endured by any human –

Then something indefinably sharp, like a flash of electricity, shot through Callie's entire body, and she landed flat on her face on the ground.

* * *

**A/N: **Coming up: ninjas! Whoo-hoo!

Oh right, and by the way, I'm doing my best to keep the characters speaking British, but I'm much better at American, which I think shines through. So please, if anything comes off overly American, tell me about it so I can fix it, puhleese! :-)

Next chapter: _Roads of Destiny_


End file.
